The Clifton Review 

The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.

While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.

What Are You Trying To Accomplish In Business?

By P.J. Malone

Since you don’t want employees rowing to Miami when your intent is to head to New York, here is a closer review of how to steer them in the right direction to ensure your company’s success.

Aligning employees by first setting the right foundation requires treating them like employee-partners and sharing relevant information with them, as previously discussed. You have to tell them what you are trying to accomplish.

What are you trying to accomplish? There are a number of business goals you may have set for yourself to move your business forward. 

For example, fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s goal to avoid the threat of the 2009 recession was to decrease cost and increase revenue. He then aligned all of his organizational components with that goal including the strategies that helped him to achieve it.

Here’s a list of business goals that you may have set that you need to line up your employees with.

• Increase the bottom line or profits (which happens by reducing cost and/or increasing sales)
• Improve efficiencies (for example, reduce the number of workers needed to perform certain tasks)
• Increase your market share (increase the number of customers the business has)
• Increase sales or income (sell more of the same product or add more products for sale)
• Improve customer service (provide better quality service to customers which can result in increased customer loyalty, increase sales and or profits, and potentially, increased market share)
• Improve customer satisfaction with the business products and services (which can also lead to increased sales and customer loyalty)
• Increase brand awareness (which can also help with attracting more customers and increasing sales) and market share)
• Growing employee expertise (which involves training on new skills or improving existing skills which can also lead to increased sales and market share)
• Expand product or service lines (provide by products and services for customers which can lead to increased sales and market share)

Once you decide on your business goal, you then have to make sure that you have identified the strategy/ies you want to implement to be able to achieve the goal; then you can work toward aligning your human resources with the strategies by first communicating this business goal and the strategies you want to implement.

Before continuing with how to communicate your goal and strategies, be sure that you have chosen the right goals. First, make sure that you have reflected on the results of your earlier SWOT analysis (assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and consider what you want to address from your discoveries. 

Then you have to answer the question, “What does success look like?” You have to define the goal—make it a SMART goal, which we’ll discuss next.

We’ll discuss goals and strategies with a little more depth before continuing to look at setting the right foundation for organizational effectiveness.